Tucson’s local flavor of Astronomy on Tap, #SpaceDrafts, presents its 55th edition this January:

Ultima Thule: Beyond the Known World

Join Dr. Veronica Bray, Planetary Scientist and Spacecraft Operations Engineer at the UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, as she gives us an insider’s account of the latest feat of NASA’s New Horizons mission—its flyby of Ultima Thule!

The New Horizons spacecraft rocketed past the Pluto system in July 2015, sending back spectacular imagery of every’s favorite “planet”! This was the first up-close imaging of of a large Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) and showed surprisingly diverse geology on Pluto and its moons. Since then, the spacecraft has continued further into the outer reaches of the solar system and towards 2014MU69, a classical KBO nicknamed “Ultima Thule” (a term used in medieval times to mean “beyond the known world”). New Horizons reached its target on New Years Day 2019. Dr. Bray will present the latest images and science results from the New Horizons mission, including a Pluto recap and new images from Ultima Thule.